Actually it probably took under 60 seconds for most people to make up their minds about Dominos after they saw this video:

It has been doing the rounds since the start of the week and crossed over into offline breaking news as it topped the “most viral” lists. The stars of the show soon found themselves fired and nicked, and Dominos hastily had to ramp up its online damage-control efforts, one element of which was a video from the boss:

I thought this video was a pretty good response and imagine it has gone a long way to helping repair things. It’s good that they’ve tried to respond using the same medium that ultimately hurt them, and tried to engage on other platforms as well. Just slightly odd that he talks off camera (as if to a reporter) — surely this is a personal address/appeal to customers and should have been straight down the barrel.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:

It doesn’t really matter whether this is a franchise, an isolated incident or an event taking place in the US – the internet is global and this damages the brand globally. Consumers don’t necessarily know or care about the detail. The only thing that matters is you could be sitting 8000 miles away and now never go to Dominos again. Ouch.

A picture paints a thousand words. If ever there were an example of how powerful video can be in terms of a reputation story, this most be high up there.

Popular conscience. A story like this one around food hygiene is the stuff of legend– what people fear could go on inside a kitchen being shown as “true”. Doesn’t really matter if it is a hoax or joke. The perception is that this is what goes on. This kind of stuff inevitably flies online.

The power of one. In the old days it would have been much harder for one person (or I guess two people here) to damage a big brand like Dominos so much and so quickly. Nowadays it takes one person with a video camera who probably thought they were having a laugh. Compare with footage of the cops at the G20 protests.

So what lessons?

• Monitor the internet proactively to identify issues at an early stage
• Respond quickly using all means available to push the message out. The video started things here but the conversation quickly spread to Twitter and beyond meaning the company had to engage on other platforms as well.
• You can’t separate online and offline. This didn’t just happen on the internet, it quickly hit the papers and TV as well.
• If you are already involved in online conversations then you have a head start on someone who has to build from scratch. Just as in the offline world it takes time to form relationships with people you want to influence.
  

It can take a tough lesson to show the internet can be make and break. But it’s never too late to start thinking about that digital strategy.